This competing continuation offers the unique opportunity to investigate within the ethnic and between age and gender group differences in physical and mental health, the onset and trajectory of disability, and the interplay of cultural factors on health and disablement. This study builds and extends the findings of our community based study of middle aged and older Mexican Americans-age 45 and older-along the U.S. Mexican border. Findings from the current study call into question commonly held assumptions about the prevalence and onset of disability among this population, norms that prescribe the roles of families of providing care, and raise serious questions about the future availability of informal care for the highly disabled elder. The proposed research strategies include: a) billing on an age stratified random sample of Mexican Americans 45 years and older residing along the U.S.-Mexican border, b) collecting longitudinal data through a 3-wave panel study of 816 Mexican Americans age 45 and older; c) administering the revised Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II (ARSMA-II) to a community based older population: d) administering the newly developed Diagnostic Scale for Depression-26 (DSD26) to the same community based population, and, e) causal modeling. The proposed 2-wave design will be built upon a first wave panel study conducted during the earlier funding cycle and currently in place. The survey data will be complemented by a variety of qualitative data collected by using random robe and in depth interviews.